Joe Burns: Conquering cowardice

Wednesday

Feb 25, 2009 at 12:01 AMFeb 25, 2009 at 9:26 AM

Let’s hear it for the New York Post. No sooner had U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder taken Americans to task for failing to talk about race when the Post published a political cartoon with racial overtones that had everyone talking.

Joe Burns

Let’s hear it for the New York Post.

No sooner had U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder taken Americans to task for failing to talk about race when the Post published a political cartoon with racial overtones that had everyone talking.

On Feb. 18, Holder, speaking before Justice Department staff, called his country “a nation of cowards” for not speaking with each other about race.

That same day the Post published a cartoon by Sean Delonas that tied together the shooting of a chimpanzee that attacked a woman with the creation of the federal stimulus bill. The cartoon shows the dead chimp sprawled on the ground in a pool of blood. A police officer, his gun still smoking, stands over him while a second officer muses: “They’ll have to find someone else to write the next stimulus bill.”

Holder’s speech, and its accusatory tone, issued at a time when this country and President Obama can little afford a distraction from the issues at hand, may have made some wince. And while it may have been confrontational in character, its intent seemed a desire to bridge a divide.

The same cannot be said of the Post cartoon, which many interpreted as portraying Obama as a dead chimp, and as such racist in its intent.

Not all agreed. A number of commentators argued that the chimp represented Congress, since it is they and not the president that writes bills. That rationale conveniently ignored that the cartoon caption referred to “someone,” an individual rather than a branch of government, and that Obama is the individual most often identified with the stimulus plan.

Others, who claimed the cartoon was meant to be an insult to Obama’s intelligence, not his race, may have remembered a series of photos, in wide circulation, that coupled President George W. Bush’s facial expressions with similar ones made by a chimpanzee.

But that defense ignores some basic differences. Bush is white and Obama is black. There is no history in this country of dehumanizing whites by comparing them to apes, but there is a long history with regards to black men and women.

In 1867 “The Negro: What is his Ethnological Status,” a painfully long litany of racism posing as Biblical evidence, concluded that the black race was within the family of apes and separate from the human race.

One hundred and forty one years later, in February 2008, a six-year study by psychologists at Stanford University, Penn State University and the University of California-Berkley found those beliefs don’t die, they just become less overt.

"The images have disappeared from popular culture and from most people's memory. … However, after completing six studies, we found strong evidence that black/ape linkages still influence people subconsciously and impact their judgment,” said Phillip Atiba Goff, assistant professor of psychology at Penn State and the lead researcher for the study.

It challenges plausibility to hold that the Post or Delonas were unaware of the racial implications of the cartoon or that those who saw its racist overtones misinterpreted its intent. It, and the weak apology that followed, was a cowardly passive-aggressive action that unlike Holder’s speech was aimed at driving a wedge into our racial divide.

But what it had in common with Holder’s statement was an intent to provoke a response. Both were successful, although not always in the way they intended. In both cases online comments were quick to appear. Some raised legitimate issues or sought to initiate a conversation while others dealt in denial or spouted self-pity wrapped up in racism.

The amount of response showed that Americans aren’t afraid to talk about race, albeit in anonymity. It isn’t voicing our views that’s a problem. Our cowardice isn’t in confronting others — it’s in confronting ourselves. It’s in not having the courage to examine our own racism or allow others to challenge those beliefs. It’s in holding on to the denials, scapegoating and all the other defenses we use as an excuse for our own frustrations, failures and fears. When we can confront and conquer that cowardice then we will truly be the land of the free and the home of the brave.

If you have an idea for a “Who Cares” column, you can call Joe Burns at 508-375-4936 or e-mail him at jburns@cnc.com.

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